Last month, at the 23rd anniversary of the downfall of the Dergue regime, Prime Minister Hailemariam declared that Ethiopia’s have become food self-sufficient at national level with annual production of major crops reaching 25 million tones (250 million Quintals). And, that “the programs launched to attain food security at household level enabled us to weather the most severe drought disaster that the Horn of Africa faced three years ago.”
The statement triggered a heated debate on social media as well as local newspapers.
Therefore, with the objective of casting light on the main conceptual issues, Horn Affairs invited the renowned scholar Dr. Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, Professor of Public Policy at AAU Graduate School.(see bio at the bottom).
Daniel Berhane: What is your take on the food security of Ethiopia?
Dr. Costantinos: Let me start by saying that Ethiopia has over 72 million hectares of arable land out of which only 14% is used for cultivation right now according to the Agriculture Ministry in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is also the water tower of North-east Africa where it exports over 122 billion cubic meters of water to neighboring countries along with two million tons of forest soil. 
Nonetheless, the past few decades have publicized the suffering of the Ethiopian people through major famines or food shortages, so much that the word has become synonymous with the name of our beloved nation. Nevertheless, Ethiopia is slowly emerging out of this legacy. It has managed to steer clear of a nation-wide famine for nearly two decades, thanks to a responsible policy of engagement with the early warning and response systems. Yet, the most enlightened in society must step forward to play the role required of them as harbingers of truth, freedom, modernity, and social change that would propel the nation to a country that can ensure livelihood security to its populace. There must be courage and an unraveled inspiration to spearhead the process towards change in a society, where for a long time in history; there have been dogma-loaded temptations to relegate the value of entrepreneurship and professional development. A strategy that puts so much trust in the administrative machinery and other paraphernalia of bureaucratic adaptation must now be replaced by one that gives due respect to the highest ethical and professional standards.
“Food insecurity in Ethiopia derives directly from dependence on undiversified livelihoods based on low-input, low-output rain fed agriculture. Ethiopian farmers do not produce enough food even in good rainfall years to meet consumption requirements. Given the fragile natural resource base and climatic uncertainty, current policy emphases on agricultural intensification are misguided, while institutional constraints such as inflexible land tenure and ethnic federalism perpetuate this unviable livelihood system. Inappropriate food aid interventions by donors add another layer of dependence, at both household and national levels. Recommendations for immediate action include improved food aid targeting and safety nets programming. Medium-term interventions focus on recapitalization of asset less households, plus agricultural yield stabilization. Long-term strategies must involve diversification away from rainfall-dependent livelihoods” (Devereux, 2000).
Leaving the legacy of famine and hunger behind must explore existing challenges and opportunities for food insecurity. These include inter-alia sustained peace and better early warning and response systems, increases in agricultural production and incomes, improved market infrastructure and information flows, and the establishment of the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP). Nonetheless, further steps are needed to reduce the likelihood of national and sub-national hunger in the future and to reduce chronic and transitory food insecurity. Among the possible measures are
* strategies to increase food production in an integrated manner (such as the Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit (CADU)) and environmentally sustainable ways,
* liberalization in the production and marketing of cereals,
* increased flexibility in allocation of cash and food in the PSNP,
* improve market access for farmers in potentially productive areas,
* improve price-stabilizing market flows in chronic or temporarily deficit areas and further investments in infrastructure,
* early warning and response systems and
* support environmental measures and community based climate change adaptation;
Daniel Berhane: How reliable is the figure that the annual crop production reached 25 million tones (250 million Quintals)?
Dr. Costantinos: Economic statistics is very difficult to ascertain in a nation where the level of information management is weak and the information highways are limited… if this is a learned guess by the authorities, I guess we will have to accept it in the absence of credible evidence to the contrary.
Daniel Berhane: Some people claim that national crop production has been sufficient even in the worst times – such as 1984, it is access to food that have always been the problem. One the other hand, the book by Webb and Braun (“Famine and Food Security in Ethiopia, 1994) claims that: “In the late 1980s, the country was producing less than 150 kilograms of cereal per person. The level required for a minimum subsistence diet is approximately 240 kilograms/person/year”. Which one of the claims is credible?
Dr. Costantinos: To achieve sustainable livelihoods and food security in an integrated and holistic manner, the major components and activities are organized to
* improve preparedness and essential preconditions for food security;
* enable and promote wise decision-making from the farm level to the national policy level
* all stakeholders should address issues of food availability,
* all stakeholders should address issues of the stability of food supplies and
* people’s economic and physical access to food supplies more efficiently and effectively;
This five-point strategic food security framework provides a foundation to address problems of food insecurity at different levels of society, over time and space, and in an integrated manner.
During the 1984 “Great African Famine”, I worked with the Red Cross where we were feeding millions of people in Wollo, Tigray, Eritrea (it was part of Ethiopia then), Shewa, Gonder, Gojjam, Hararghe, Sidamo, Wolayta, Borena, Ogaden… literally the whole country. While access to food is important as you can see from bullet point five up there, I can testify that with imports of hundreds of thousands of tons of food aid every month and One Million people DEAD from the famine, it is difficult to say that Ethiopia’s harvest were good enough to feed the population. After the rains came, as Secretary General of the Red Cross, it was my duty to assess the food balance, as the donors did not trust the Derg’s assessment… Our findings were that the food balance could not get to ‘normal’ until early 1986.
Therefore, the later part of the question is correct – there is a structural food deficit in the nation.
Daniel Berhane: Can a country claim to be “food self-sufficient at national level” while 2.7 million people are reportedly expecting emergency food relief assistance this year?
Dr. Costantinos: You have answered the question yourself!
Daniel Berhane: What is food security? What is food self-sufficiency?
Dr. Costantinos: Simply, food self-sufficiency is about producing all of our food by ourselves, while food security is having the economic might to be able to produce and/or import food that our populace needs.
Food self-sufficiency at national level is the gross food balance available for the population as a country. It does not take regional and local disparities into the local context. Food security at household level is simply the existence of sufficient calories to power the family throughout the year.
This means we need to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger through a shift from unskilled to skilled work and through sustainable farming system intensification, diversification and value-addition, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower the technical training of women, improve maternal health and nutrition to avoid the birth of low-weight babies and combat the diseases of poverty. It also means ensuring conservation and the enhancement of basic life-support systems including land, water, forests, biodiversity and the atmosphere. Science and technology pilot programs should be introduced where the following components of the production–processing–marketing–consumption chain can be developed in a participatory mode. These entail an assessment of indigenous technology options relevant to improvement of productivity and food security, market potentials and constraints for existing and prospective commodities in the farming systems and the scope for the following new technology options to enhance productivity and food security:
The IAC Panel recommends five underlying strategic themes should guide the future of agricultural research and development: identification of science and technology options that can make a difference. The full complement of available technologies should be explored, from chemical fertilizers to organic fertilizers and from integrated pest, soil and nutrient management to irrigation. A second theme to guide the future is to build impact-oriented research, knowledge and development institutions that reflect the needs of the local farmers in identifying new avenues of research. This goal is best accomplished by involving farmers, who very clearly understand the problems. The third theme is creating and retaining a new generation of agricultural scientists to perform future research. The fourth theme is ensuring markets and policies that make the poor prosperous and food secure. The final theme is the need for experimentation in creating effective solutions to the problems of African agriculture, especially those that empower the farmers in Africa to make decisions about their own crops and their own livelihoods.
This can only happen if we use part of the 72 million hectares of arable land and the 122 billion cubic meters of water we are discharging yearly.
*******
Bio: Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD, Professor of Public Policy at School of Graduate Studies, College of Business and Economics, of Addis Ababa University. Also, Chair of Ethiopica Infrastructure & Tunneling Co. & AAI Capital. His area of work include participatory policy analysis, formulation and management – local institutions, civil society development, and strategic planning and resource management as a senior adviser for a number of international and regional organizations such as AU, EU, UNDP, UNECA, UNICEF, and countries in Africa. He is author of numerous papers published in professional journals, presented to workshops and symposium. Recently he has written serious of books on governance, resource management and climate change adaptation.
